Last week, a heated and racially charged exchange on social media between a winemaker and a high-profile wine writer consumed the attention of wine lovers and professionals in the Italian wine world.

I was still in Italy last Friday when I began receiving screenshots of the thread (these days, social media users circulate screen-grabs so as to avoid clicking on the pages of the persons involved and raising their results in search engines).

The producer asked the writer to refrain from posting racially charged comments in the thread.

The writer responded: “I won’t write another line on the wines of a producer who feels so close to the invaders of our our country… Goodbye!” (translation mine)

Racial tensions are coming to a boil in the country as the Italian government and citizens face a growing immigration crisis.

Every day countless migrants hazard the Mediterranean crossing from North Africa, many of them shipwrecked along the way as they search for a better life in Europe. Italy is their main point of entry. Many of them have perished before reaching European soil.

Last week, French officials began refusing entry to migrants who were making their way north.

And even within Italy, as the New York Times reports, “Governors in the prosperous regions of Lombardy and Veneto, both [separatist] Northern League strongholds, have resisted transfers of refugees from overcrowded reception centers in the south.”

The wine writer is from Lombardy and lives and works there.

The grape grower lives and works in Liguria, along the coast, not far from the French border where the migrants have become refugees.

It’s never pretty when racial tensions spill over into the world of wine. And this ugly episode, the most recent in a string of racially charged exchanges and the subsequent online shaming, reflects the nation’s extremely taut mood with regard to the browning of Europe, to borrow the American phrase.

In 1989 (the year that the image above was first published), I was a second-year student at the University of Padua (in Veneto). I remember how a good friend announced — with equal pride and trepidation — that the trucking company he worked for had hired an African for the first time.

At that time, the EU was not yet in place and Africans were first making their way to Italy in significant numbers. My friend and I discussed race relations nearly every day.

Today, the mounting, looming immigration and refugee crisis makes the subject of race and race relations impossible to avoid. I’ve spend three weeks in Italy over the last two months: not a day passed that the topics didn’t come up in conversation with my friends, colleagues, and hosts.

After scores of social media users posted notes of solidarity on the producer’s social platform, the winemaker asked friends and colleagues “to turn the page” and move on.

As an envoi to the episode, the grape grower posted the following lines from the 1991 novel Vento Largo (Large Wind) by twentieth-century Ligurian writer Francesco Biamonti. The title of the book is inspired by the sailing term large wind.

The book’s themes address human loneliness and how it pushes us to extremes as we seek to escape it.

At one point, the central character, a ferry pilot who seeks to aid clandestine migrants, remembers the lines of a song sung by his young would-be lover.

My father departed
for other lands.
He left to search
the highest peaks
of his dreams.

Even if we live all of our years in the same place, we are all migrants as we pass through life. Our souls are constantly searching the highest peaks of our dreams in hope of finding meaning, fulfillment, and peace on our journey on the earth.

As the Europeans face what often seems to be an insurmountable issue, let’s hope that they and we can all remember the humanity of our refugee sisters and brothers and the humanity that resides within us.

Hi Do, a great post, an open mind.Unfortunely, in Italy and in Europe,, many people in difficult ( or not), is under attack of neofascism or something similar in a modern form of mind washing..For fews votes more, some our rubbish politicians instead to take their responsabilities for their actions and previous wrong choices, they just blames immigrants for everithings.The problem have to find a sutions working togheter between Countries instead to talk and talk and talk.They only’re creating socials tension all over Europe.Ciao.

Mr. Parzen, American man who work with Italy and gain many euro with Italian wineries, please write about your country and not propose you as a philosopher and expert of Italian and European political affairs.
You are ONLY a good and very astute wine writer, very attentive to your business. You are not Edward Luttwak or a great genius of political international strategies

What, this racist want from you Mr. Parzen?
He feel the freedom to post racist or similar comments everywhere, and is even offended about the reactions of many Italians and others people from all over, posting offensive comments about him. Ehi Mr. racist Your freedom finish, where you have a lack of respect for the HUMAN RIGHTS.
IDIOT.
The fact Mr. Parzen works and gain money in Italy, doesn’t means anything, doesn’t means you can offend to anyone.May be he love our Coutry, and talk always well about Italy’ But people like you,it’s so selfish and it’s a SHAME for Italy and for everyone.
Yes in Italy and in Europe we have a very difficult situation, but politicians they have to work together to resolve the problem. They have to invest part of the money, they have already gain and still to the second and third World
.This persons are constrict, in this conditions also for our selfish economic World system.
We should just talk about wine, someone could say it, but the real life it’s not just about this.

Ps.May be, the next time, the racist, every racist, could think, before to write idiots things, with no sense at all, like “send them back” send them where idiots?